Faulty manual lens?

J

Jayceyned

Messages
73
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi guys,

I just spent £50 on an old M42 28mm Vivitar lens & I'm pretty sure it's buggered but would really appreciate a sanity check:

It has an auto& manual switch near the aperture ring, & regardless of what mode it's in, when I rotate the aperture ring the aperture doesn't budge from wide open.

There's a loose pin poking out the back of the lens. Just wanted to check that there's nothing special I should have to do to change aperture apart from rotate the ring is there?

The lens is not attached to my camera when I'm playing with it so I can see straight through & see the aperture.
 
If you move the switch to Manual, the aperture should change. With the switch in auto, the aperture should close down only when you press the pin in.

There's usually a little movement on the pin, but it should not be loose.
 
It sounds as though the aperture blades are sticking. They can be serviced, but if at all possible I would return it and have a refund.

I recently bought a Carl Zeiss 50mm M42 off eBay, which was described as "excellent", it also had sticking blades, so I returned it and had a refund.

I now have one in perfect condition I bought for £8 from a charity shop.
 
Push the pin in and then try changing the aperture. This caught me out last week when I was looking at an old lens.
 
micloi said:
If you put it on the camera, usually the mount converter pushes the pin and allows the aperture to be changed.
Click to expand...

depends on the adaptor, the sony/minolta one i used to have didn't(hence the glueing of the pin) my eos adaptor does press the pin in though.

what camera is the OP using?
 
Hey guys,

Thought I'd let you know what's happening:

I fiddled with the lens more last night & this morning & determined that it's faulty. Thanks so much for all of your input. I was pretty sure it was buggered, but never having seen / used a manual lens before I was not 100%.

It turned out that there's a fault with the auto-aperture mechanism. The aperture switch was stuck in auto mode and it was never properly switching to manual mode - hence the blades never moving. The aperture pin on the back was loose & didn't stop the aperture down when pressed.

I managed to get the aperture switch to go over to manual a few times by shaking the lens a little from side-to-side whilst switching, then the aperture ring functioned perfectly.

I've chatted to the guy via eBay & it's going back 1st thing Monday. Refund.

Thanks again for all your help guys,

Really appreciate it.
 
Are you saying that the apperture does not change in response to the apperture ring, or that it does not change when you take a picture?
 
It doesn't change with the aperture ring.

As I said I've worked it out - it was jammed stuck in auto mode, hence the aperture didn't change with the ring.

No worries.

Thanks for your help.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top